How To Find Out How Your Fitness Compares To A Pro Athlete’s

WH’s Alice Ellis pitted her fitness against athletes – you can do the same!
- byAlice Ellis

01 May
2017

Knowing I’m about to do the bleeping beep test is enough to get my butterflies fluttering at the best of times. But today I’m taking the test – and other fitness challenges – against some of the best in the business: cricketer Mitchell Johnson and NRL player Billy Slater. Can’t wait.

In conjunction with the New South Wales Institute of Sport, Powerade has developed a “Powerscore” – basically a measure of your fitness level, based on your performance in speed, power, endurance and agility tests. Johnson, Slater and other pro athletes are also doing the tests, to set a ‘fittest of the fit’ kinda benchmark, then regs people like me and you can take the tests to compare yourself to mates and the elite.

The agility test involves doing figure eights around a couple of posts, to see how fast I can change direction. The speed test is a 40m sprint. The power test is a vertical leap that involves jumping, then extending one up upwards to touch the highest stick you possibly can on a yardstick (your height is taken into account for this one). And the endurance part of things is measured by that beep test.

In comparison to the people I do the tests alongside, I feel like I do best in the power test, but my best score is for agility, closely followed by speed. My endurance result… ergh, not so great. It's the beep test's fault.

Powerade does the sums and calculates that my total Powerscore is 635 – and hey, I’m pretty happy with that considering that Mitchell Johnson’s Powerscore is 881! I’m only about 25% less fit than my favourite male cricketer.

You can test your own fitness by taking part in the tests and getting a Powerscore. Go to www.powerade.com.au for details!